“I know.”

“I’m only human.”

“Uh-huh. What did you tell him?”

“That I didn’t know. That I had to think.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“I’m not sure.” She was silent for a few moments. “You know,” she said, her voice softer, “it’s a funny thing, a proposal of marriage. A very strange thing. I have been proposed to before but it was never something to take very seriously, or at least I didn’t, you know, on account of not being ready to. To be serious, I mean. But it is a funny thing. It makes you feel very good, you know, that someone would ask you to marry him.”

“Sure.”

“I always wondered, you know, if you would someday ask me to, uh, to marry you. And how I would feel. You know.”

“Er.”

“I think about it occasionally, because you’re right, we do love each other. But I know you’ve never wanted to get married so I never pushed anything. But when this fellow asked me, oh, I thought how I had two minds about it, and I asked myself how would I feel if it had been you proposing instead of this fellow, and I knew I would be just of one mind. That I would want to marry you. And make a home with you, with you and Minna, sort of a ready-made family almost, and, oh, this is just what went through my mind and I shouldn’t have said anything to you but I couldn’t help it-”

Her voice just trailed off, as if fading in the distance.

“I’d better get my coat and go home now, Evan,” she said a little later. “To Brooklyn.”

“I’ll take you.”

“No, please, I’ll just get in a cab.”

“I’ll put you in a cab.”

“Well, if you want.”

I flagged a cab on Seventh Avenue. I held the door for her and said, “Look, I don’t want you to marry this cook. But I can’t tell you not to because-”

“There’s nothing to explain.”

“I suddenly find my life completely fragmented, and up until a little while ago it had seemed very together. I have things to think about.”